The darktown fire brigade-all on their mettle: Git dere fust if you's bust you trousers!"" – Vintage Print
![The darktown fire brigade-all on their mettle: Git dere fust if you's bust you trousers!"", [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1889 — antique lithograph](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/ea/ea24545a5e34-L.webp)
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
This rare antique lithograph captures The darktown fire brigade-all on their mettle: Git dere fust if you's bust you trousers!"" in remarkable detail. An authentic image from the Library of Congress, it carries the weight of the real historical record.
Choose the framed print, ready to hang the day it arrives, or the unframed print for a frame of your own. A fine choice for anyone who loves history, and a gift that gets noticed. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Snapshots of the Past has been bringing history to the wall since 2001, for tens of thousands of customers worldwide.
The darktown fire brigade-all on their mettle: Git dere fust if you's bust you trousers!""
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Its title promises a chaotic rush to a blaze, with a crew of Darktown firemen eager to prove themselves and a punchline in dialect about pulling on trousers in a hurry. Issued by Currier & Ives in New York in 1889, it belongs to the firm's Darktown series, a run of lithographic caricatures that portrayed Black Americans as comic buffoons. Such prints drew on minstrel-show stereotypes and sold widely in the late 19th century, and today they are read as examples of racist imagery rather than good-natured humor. The print is worth viewing with that history in mind.
| Created / published | [New York] : Currier & Ives, 1889 |
|---|---|
| Medium | 1 print : lithograph. |
| Genre | c1983 |
| Notes | Caricature issued as part of the Darktown comics" series. Currier & Ives : a catalogue raisonné / compiled by Gale Research. Detroit |
| Source | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division |
| Original scan | 1,536 × 1,167 px · prints to 5 × 4 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-174306 |
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